Hi everyone,
Hope you're having a great start to the new year.
I wanted to ask if anyone is using Pledges to record regular donations made by Direct Debot that aren't linked to membership and therefore don't have a fixed end date.
We have some donors who donate either monthly or annually and currently I enter a pledge for them using the amount they're expected to donate in a tax year and set it to end at the end of the tax year. It's working fine at the moment, but I'm just a little apprehensive about having to cancel or write off a pledge if anyone decided to cancel their regular donation before the end of the tax year.
Does anyone know if it's possible to set a pledge that only relates to the amount that will be given regularly, rather than an amount that will be given in full?
Thanks,Sanpreet
Hi Sanpreet,
In the past I've handled some direct debits similar to what you described here - recurring payments going into a general appeal with no end date. We also used pledges matching financial/tax year dates so it would match up with our other income reporting.
I'm not sure I understand the distinction between setting a pledge for "an amount that will be given regularly" rather than an "amount that will be given in full" - do any of your other direct debits get taken monthly or are all of your direct debit payments annual/one-off payments?
You can set up multiple installments when creating a direct debit schedule and manually edit dates (so they don't have to be monthly, and there don't have to be twelve installments). I could talk you through this in more detail if this sounds like it would help with this issue, or you could let me know if I've misunderstood?
Thanks,
Emer
Hi Emer,
Thanks for replying.
For the difference between "an amount that will be given regularly" and an "amount that will be given in full" I meant that with regular direct debeits we don't really know how much the donor will end up giving in total overall, just what they've set up to give for now. We have a mxiture off annual and monthly payments at the moment.
It's good to know that you have used it for what I;m trailling it with now. Can you tell me if you've ever had to write off a pledge when someone cancelled their donation and if that caused any issues?
ThanksSanpreet
Apologies Sanpreet for this delayed reply! I had to write off pledges occasionally when the regular payments were stopped (at the payer's choice or because the payer had passed away), and can't think of any issues that came up.
If someone was cancelling I'd make sure to set past payments to "Normal Billing" and remove the "Credit Card" with account details so there wasn't a chance of any extra payments being taken by mistake, or their payment schedule renewing.
Hope that helps - and if you have any other questions will make sure it doesn't take me weeks to reply again . . .
Don;t worry about the delayed reply! Thanks for getting back to me though - that's really very helpful.
Best
Sanpreet